Pulse Front

Relational Architecture 12

Pulse Front was a matrix of light over Toronto's Harbourfront, made with lightbeams from twenty powerful robotic searchlights, entirely controlled by a network of sensors that measured the heart rate of passers-by. Ten metal sculptures detected the pulse of people who held them: the readings were immediately converted into light pulses by the computers and also determined the orientation of the beams. The resulting effect was a visualization of vital signs, arguably our most symbolic biometric, in an urban scale. When no one was participating, the matrix showed the heart rate recordings for the last 10 people who tried the interfaces.